"It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have."
—Flannery O'Connor
My Favorite Knife
I've been remiss in my weekly Maine Guide Tips. This one doesn't fall into the category of backwoods folk wisdom (unless it's Swedish folk wisdom), but bear with me.
In my outdoor endeavors I'm an unapologetic gear junkie. I like tools and gadgets and have a weakness for buying stuff that promises much and delivers little. That means I buy a lot of overpriced crap.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is the Mora knife. These traditional Swedish-made knives are insanely inexpensive (you can pick one up new for less than $14 on eBay), probably because they seem cheap (in the sense of not well made). Moras usually have plastic grips and ugly plastic sheathes, for crying out loud. But their blades—which come in four varieties: carbon-steel, stainless, Triflex and laminated-steel —are just incredible. They're tough and hold an edge extremely well, and their design allows you to apply pressure with your thumb along the top, which is something you want in an all-purpose outdoors knife. The Swedes claim you can chop down a tree with a Mora, and while I've never attempted to fell a poplar with mine, I have subjected them to considerable abuse. And they've never let me down.
The more I've used my Moras, the more the brilliance of that plastic grip and sheath has dawned on me, too. Plastic is light and it doesn't rot (like leather) or corrode (like metal). Many of the styles allow you to attach a lanyard, too. Sure the plastic seems chintzy, and you'll never confuse a Mora clipper [like the one above] with a Laguiole, but for $14 you couldn't ask for a more dependable friend in the woods.
Even better, Moras are now distributed in the U.S. by a Maine company, which is sort of cool from a parochial standpoint.
And I Thought Magazine Editing Was Crazy
I used to run a non-profit literary center, the great and Rasputin-like Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, back when it was the ultimate one-stop-shop for all Maine books. In the 1990s our wholesaling book distribution service supplied hundreds of titles to dozens of bookstores and libraries each year. I then drifted away from the book industry into magazines where I've been almost ever since. Recently, I've returned to the book world as an editorial director, and of course, as an author, and I've been doing a lot of catching up — a lot of catching up.
Needless to say, I found Daniel Menaker's assessment of the book editor's life sobering on all sorts of levels. One section of the article I found puzzling was Menaker's estimation of the total number of book readers in the U.S. If there are only a million or so, as he guesses, who bought those zillion copies of The DaVinci Code? No, seriously.
Ride-Along
I was fortunate to spend the afternoon on a ride-along with a local game warden. We patrolled his district and logged a few hours with a warden pilot flying low above the rolling hills of midcoast Maine, looking for signs of poachers. We saw many suspicious wheel tracks in remote fields and a handful of jury-rigged blinds recently built near beaver flowages. My neighborhood night-hunters are already getting the autumn itch, it seems.
Mostly, though, we spotted backwoods marijuana patches. Man, oh, man, did we find lots of pot. Just about every tract of woods seemed to contain a half-hidden cannabis garden. The wardens made notes of the locations of these secret stashes and made plans to stake them out in the coming days.
It was a gorgeous afternoon to be in the air — 600 feet above the ground, racing along at 125 miles per hour — and I didn't even get airsick despite the endless loop de loops. I owe the Maine Warden Service a debt for giving me the experience.
On to Bouchercon
I'll be attending the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Indianapolis in October, and even though The Poacher's Son won't formally be published by Minotaur Books until April 27, 2010 (mark your calendars now), I expect to meet a few people who have read advance galleys of the novel. If you see a dazed looking guy with a Registered Maine Guide pin wandering through the crowded hotel hallways, it's probably yours truly. Either that or it's film director David Fincher who has the unmitigated gall to somewhat resemble me. Tell him I enjoyed Zodiac, will you?
